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Saturday, January 18, 2014

I like to keep things as natural as possible in my cooking, or at least keep the ingredients similar to what would have been available back in the old days. One thing that is devilishly hard to find though is organic brown sugar. There's one brand available here and despite my love of their other offerings I was not impressed with the brown sugar they make.

See, when I lived in the Philippines, brown sugar meant Muscavado Sugar and I could buy it at the Palengke for about 60 cents a kilo (2.2lbs). Here it's $7 per half pound so far out of my price range. Then it struck me one day that brown sugar in the store is just regular sugar with molasses added back into it. Problem is they use the lowest grade sugar and molasses to make brown sugar but by making it at home you can control the ingredients and have something that comes out like my beloved muscavado sugar from before.

There's no real recipe here, I use Florida Crystals Organic Sugar and Plantation Molasses. Simply pour some sugar into a small bowl and drizzle a little molasses in. Mix with a fork until blended. Less molasses will yield a light brown sugar and more will yield the typical dark brown sugar. Use as you would normal store bought brown sugar and store any leftover in a glass jar tightly capped in the pantry.